Freelance writes and homeschooling mother Kate Tsubata, offers the following advice in her column in the Washington Post...

What may help your family break the science barrier is to seek out more exciting presentations of scientific material. In our home, we have been fortunate to be the recipients of back issues of Scientific American, a popular science magazine that my father has subscribed to for years, and which he passes along to my son every few months.

This magazine, which I can remember paging through during my own childhood, presents scientific issues in attractive ways. One big plus is the excellent photos, graphics and other illustrative materials used in each article. The editors put a lot of effort into bringing the topic to life with exciting visual elements that greatly augment the written text.

Another plus is the magazine's editorial approach. It seeks out the latest and most exciting breakthroughs in a wide number of fields, from human behavior to brain chemistry to astrophysics to germs. A given issue might cover the latest discoveries in human fossil remains, a new system for measuring activities on a distant planet or galaxy, or how microscopic technology is making changes in health care.

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